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Betty Sue Palmer died on the morning of Friday, May 20 in Los Angeles after a long illness, ET has learned. She was 81.

In 2004, Depp brought his mother to the Academy Awards, when he received his first Oscar nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

Depp had a close relationship with his mother. The 52-year-old actor has a tattoo of her name, “Betty Sue,” inside a heart on his left upper arm that he reportedly got in the late ‘80s, and in 1995, he purchased a 43-acre Kentucky farm for his mother, spending nearly $1 million.

"My mother was raised in a shack, in the wilds of Appalachia, where the toilet was an outhouse,” he said at the time. “She used to say she did the same things that her mom did -- and her mom certainly didn't know any better. With my kids, they're told 75 times a day that they're loved. One thing I know is they feel loved and secure and happy and needed and necessary and a part of something."